The WordPress 6.3 development cycle has begun and work is already underway on an ambitious list of features that will debut in the upcoming major release. It will cap off Phase 2 of the Gutenberg project, with an emphasis on polishing customization features and making them easier to use.

WordPress 6.3 Editor Triage co-lead Anne McCarthy published a roadmap to 6.3 this week, which summarizes what users can expect:

This release aims to make it easier for users to edit pages, manage navigation, and adjust styles all directly in the Site Editor. It also seeks to provide detailed, relevant information when exploring different parts of the site, such as showing the number of posts per page when viewing relevant blog templates.

In addition to polishing and wrapping up phase 2, McCarthy’s post outlines the new features that are coming. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Introduce content editing, including clarifying the relationship between templates and content.
• Add a Navigation section to the Site Editor with nuanced options depending on the number of menus and complexity of each.
• Add a Pages section to the Site Editor. 
• Add a Styles section to the Site Editor. 
• Expose revisions (styles, templates, and template parts).
• Add a command center tool for easily accessing different parts of your site. More information here.
• Add Theme Previews for block themes.
• Surface aspect ratio tooling.
• Consider adding distraction free mode to Site Editor. 
• Keep custom templates and template parts across themes.
• Add an interface for font management.
• Explore a path towards “library” management with reusable blocks and template parts.

This is a tentative glimpse at some of the user-facing features that may be coming in WordPress 6.3, but the roadmap includes many more items, screenshots, and quick demos.

“As always, what’s shared here is being actively pursued, but doesn’t necessarily mean each will make it into the final release of WordPress 6.3,” McCarthy said.

Gutenberg Lead Architect Matías Ventura will be leading WordPress 6.3. Beta 1 is expected in a little more than a month on June 27, 2023, with RC 1 on July 18, and the general release scheduled for August 8.